Cliven "Y'all Qaida" Bundy (born 1946) is a southeastern Nevada rancher currently in the middle of a 20-year old legal dispute with the United States federal government over unpaid grazing fees of cattle on federal land that culminated in a March 2014 armed standoff. He became a hero to the lunatic fringe overnight, but then he started muttering about how blacks were better off under slavery.[2][3] By then, though, he had already been lionized as a kindly old gentleman fighting back against 'the system', and the image stuck.[4]

Bundy claims that the U.S. government does not have a right to control the land on which he grazes his cows, because, "at the moment of Statehood land inside the new State is no longer U.S. Territory, and no longer does U.S. Congress or any of the federal agencies have authority to dispose of the land or make any rules or regulations respecting to it."[5][6] Bundy has further argued that "... he is a citizen of Nevada and not a citizen of a territory of the United States."[7] The United States, and Nevada, beg to differ.

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Bundy stopped paying his grazing lease in 1993. Since then, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM[11]) has been trying to have Bundy remove his illegally pastured cattle from federal land. This happened after the BLM initiated conservation efforts to try to protect the desert tortoise in designated areas. This was done mostly by the BLM re-purchasing previous grazing permits. Bundy responded to this by ranging his cattle pretty much wherever he wanted on BLM-held land.

The area where Bundy is located is an area known for aggression against federal authorities, and the BLM tried to avoid an armed Waco- or Ruby Ridge-styled standoff with Bundy.[12]

“”We did some research online with PsyID today, and found that there’s about 10 or 15 percent of the people who are talking about this online that are truly frightening. They don’t care what the facts are. They just want a fight.

Some 1000 members of various right wing militias from across the country came out in support of Bundy. Some of these were snipers positioned to shoot at federal authorities.[14][15] The brave militiamen concocted a plan to place women in front of the snipers so they would be shot at first, to increase sympathy for their cause.[16]

After the standoff ended in their favor, the militias declared victory and began using the event to aggressively recruit new members. One of them, Arizona State Militia, claims to have received more than 100 new applicants in 72 hours.[18]

This did not necessarily mean he got away with it. In January 2016, his sons Ammo Ammon and Ryan, as well as some buddies decided to escalate the wingnuttery by taking over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon (which they had no claim over) in protest of two other ranchers (Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son, Steven) getting arrested on charges of arson. They wanted the feds to give back all the land to the "people", never mind that the people already own the land.[19] Cliven himself eventually flew up to Oregon to support his kids, but he was rather quickly arrested in a Portland airport by the FBI once they'd caught word.[20] At this time of writing, he has been indicted by a federal grand jury on numerous felony charges, and has been denied bail.[21] The standoff itself mostly ended not in a blaze of patriotic glory, but an FBI blockade and most of the militia surrendering save Lavoy "Tarpman" Finicum, who waved a pistol at FBI agents and was thus shot to death.[22][23]

The incident with Bundy also showed how screwed up race politics and policing is in America. Bundy's supporters are open-carry advocates at home and at the ranch that openly threatened federal agents, forcing them to back off. After this incident a number of African-American open-carry advocates started showing how differently they were treated while openly carrying firearms and not threatening anyone,[24][25] including a number of videos showing officers pulling their weapon and ordering the advocate on the ground or they will be shot instead of having a polite conversation if the advocate was white. What made it worse is that during the same news cycle several African-Americans, like 12-year-old Tamir Rice, were shot and killed openly carrying toy guns without even having a chance to obey police orders.[26][27]

↑"The public lands in Nevada are the property of the United States because the United States has held title to those public lands since 1848, when Mexico ceded the land to the US following the Mexican–American War (United States vs. Gardner, 107 F.3d at 1318, United States vs. Cliven Bundy, 1998).

↑Horsford, Steven, "Cliven Bundy and the dangers of fueling extremism", WaPo 7.18.14. Horsford: "At this point, Hannity and Co. washed their hands of the story. They had their anti-government victory, and now they needed to distance themselves from Bundy’s racism. Unfortunately, it was too late to truly pull the plug. The fringe had long since taken encouragement from all the supportive coverage."